Dunn County
Report date
April 2020
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
We had good success in retaining the majority of the communities that were part of our pilot GoLocal! ND project. Only two communities did not continue with the project, despite several attempts to keep them on board. The benefit of keeping the previous communities has been essential to our success, as they bring experience, expertise, and examples of what has worked and what has not worked in their communities. We were excited to have two community coordinators who have done the most with this project as mentors for our new community coordinators. Both assisted us in facilitating our first community summit held last fall. They have consistently provided us excellent examples of what can work in a community, and by doing so, they have paved the way tor easier implementation in our new communities. These two community members have also been instrumental in leading the COVID-19 campaigns to keep their businesses vital; and they regularly share their experiences. The importance this brings to the project is that the stakeholders themselves are working with their peers to network and share.
One of our communities took the lead in working on her county's procurement policies. While the methods used in the community created some discontent among county leaders, it did draw community awareness to the issue of government subdivisions purchasing products online or out of town when they are available within the community. The coordinator was very open with the other communities about her approach in learning how much was actually spent by the county in out of town purchases. She shared that how they went about it was likely not the best approach and they would do things differently if they could redo their efforts. This was an excellent learning tool for the communities that have not yet addressed this issue in not what to do. Much collaborative discussion has occurred among the community coordinators about how to approach this issue in the future. As we move forward, we will be careful in the guidance we give and how we will help communities approach their county and city leadership.
We have been addressing the issue of local foods, and as the COVID-19 pandemic has increased in intensity, the concept of providing more food at the local level has become of greater interest among the communities. We have joined in partnership with the ND Department of Agriculture to identify resources for local food producers and users of local foods. Ag has developed a layered map of resources that include farmers markets, CSAs, meat (beef, poultry, pork) producers that sell locally, vineyards, value-added producers. Vision West ND has agreed to work on identifying grocery stores, restaurants, roadside stands, and specialty stores that provide local foods and map or list them. We will keep each other informed as each of us becomes knowledgeable of resources that the other should have. In this fashion, we will be able to work in partnership without duplication of efforts and our communities will have a much better idea of where they can go to find the local foods they are asking for.
Key lessons learned
The COVIDD-19 pandemic and the tanking of oil prices has put our counties and cities in a downward economic spiral. First, staff are limited by working at home and in some cases, not working at all. City and county elected leaders are rightfully concerned about their upcoming budgets and how they are going to be able to cover the needs of the community with what appears to be a decreased income and downsized budget. To that end, few key city and county staff and elected leaders are concerned with much of anything else. And until the state and country is beginning to reopen, most of this project’s community coordinators are not going to be able to address the procurement issue with leadership. Current conditions are requiring us to take an entirely different approach than that which we had originally planned.
Getting new communities on board has taken longer than we had originally expected. We had planned on having a total of 15 communities (including the pilot communities) on board no later than August 2019. As of this report, we have 13 communities committed and working on project priorities. Two of those communities have been slow to get started for different reasons. And because of COVID-19, we have not been able to get out to the communities this spring as planned. Instead, we are holding Zoom meetings with the communities and will continue to do that as much as possible. We do anticipate that we will make good progress with the new communities as they develop their community work groups and we continue to have good support from our pilot communities. What does this mean for the project? We may not be able to fully achieve the objectives we originally set out to accomplish.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
Collaboration has always been the primary focus of Vision West ND in all of its work. Collaborative efforts are what has made the consortium successful. It is through the generous support of each other that the GoLocal!ND community coordinators have made it easier for new communities to become involved and start looking at the issues in their own communities. Having identified community project coordinators to do some of the training and facilitation has been beneficial to the other coordinators – it isn’t consultants who are training, but their peers who have already begun laying a path to identify solutions and begin to implement their plans. This group of community project coordinators have willingly and generously shared their resources, identified their problems and offered solutions. All of our community coordinators are not afraid to reach out and ask for assistance, and that has come about only because of the spirit of collaboration that exists within the Vision West ND culture.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Reliability is of utmost importance for the success of the Vision West ND projects. Our communities know they can rely on the GoLocal! ND team to provide good resources and give solid advice - not always what they want to hear, but always what they need to hear. Our communities rely on their own community work groups made up of reliable elected and business leaders, rely on their peers from other communities to offer solutions that work, and rely on the Vision West team for good direction, good advice, and good resources.
Understanding the problem
With an economy based on commodities, we were aware that our communities must diversify if they are to be sustainable over the long term. This concept of economic diversification was the entire premise of our grant application. Today, cattle prices are declining on a daily basis, oil prices have hit an historical rock-bottom, and commodity prices for grains and seeds are lower than they have been in a decade. Western North Dakota's economy is in danger now more than it has been since the Great Depression. It is essential, now more than ever, that communities look beyond commodities as their only sources of income and diversity into other areas. Unfortunately, with the COVID-10 pandemic, our leaders and community coordinators have been hampered in their ability to readily respond. Today, we know that we must do business differently than before and the 'new normal' is going to be with us for quite some time. It is clear we must work on creative and innovative solutions to solving this economic issue.
One last thought
We had been sending and posting regular ongoing messaging with'localism' resources and background for communities. That changed almost immediately when COVID-19 hit. Today, we are sending information from federal, public, and private resources (including Bush Foundation) for business and community support and funding on almost a regular basis. We are assisting communities with emergency grant applications. We are sending daily resources for small businesses, agriculture businesses, and community subdivisions as they come across this desk. At the same time, we are gathering information for the GoLocal! ND website, the Vision West ND website, and the social media pages to keep people informed as much as possible. We are hopeful we will be able to spend more time on the grant's objectives and outcomes and less on emergency resources, but at this time, it is the emergency resource distribution that is of most importance to our communities.